Dependencies missing ??

[Michael Schwendt]

On 25/10/2007, Dave Burns <tburns at hawaii.edu> wrote:
> > Again, pure luck that when you did it, the mirror manager directed you
> > to a repository that had the _complete set_ (!) of updates already and
> > not just the new firefox [1]:
> >
> > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2007-October/msg00361.html
> > https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-package-announce/2007-October/msg00362.html
> >
>
> I am still not understanding either what the problem was or how to
> work around it. Was it that people experiencing this problem updated
> from repositories that had the new firefox but did not have updates
> for all the things (e.g. epiphany) that might depend on gecko-libs?

Exactly that was the problem.

They only had the old gecko-libs in their old firefox, the old
dependencies (yelp, devhelp, ...), and the new firefox in the updates
repo told Yum/RPM that it would replace the old gecko-libs with a
newer version. RPM noticed that this would breaks dependencies, and
refused to install the updated firefox _without_ also installing
updated dependency packages.

> So
> we should've tried to figure out what installed packages depend on
> gecko-libs and look for updates for all of them?

Substitute "look" with "wait".

The firefox update (including the new gecko-libs version) was
available, but the updated (= rebuilt) yelp, devhelp, liferea, ...
packages were not available [yet].

Removing the old firefox forcefully and asking yum to reinstall it
would not fix anything at all as long as the used repository carries
only the new firefox/gecko-libs and still not the new dependencies.

> Was there something
> on those pages you mention above that should've implied this to me?

Those are the update announcements, which show how the rebuilt
dependencies showed up ~19 hours after the firefox update. Add to that
the time it takes for the packages to be mirrored.